A Father's Blasphemy

I can't walk into one of these empty places
Without thinking of Philip Larkin's "Church Going,"
And I certainly can't write about going to an empty church
Without Larkin's ghost poking me on the shoulder
And telling me, "I've already been here. Move along."
But I'm not moving along. I'm staying. I used to live here.

And so here we are: me and my daughter,
Who has only been walking on this earth a few months,
At the entrance of a church, a respite from downtown shopping.
She is banging on the baptismal font and laughing at the echo.
"You bang away, sweetheart," I tell her.
"You'll never have to be water-boarded in one of those things."

She runs from pew to pew, more giggling at novelty,
And I only make sure that she doesn't rip the hymnal pages.
Otherwise, I let her run free and sinless in the aisles
As I become distracted by wall paintings of Peter, Paul, and Mary,
Which remind me of the children's song "Puff the Magic Dragon,"
A bittersweet song about putting away nonexistent childish things.

After the baby grabs my finger to climb onto the platform,
She whacks and scream-laughs at the wooden pulpit.
In her size four purple Sauconys, she runs roughshod over this space,
Like a little trickster who knows she is defiling the sacred.
But it is her ignorance of sacrilege that pleases me most,
That odd word invented by penis-owning homo sapiens.

I imagine that my daughter will change the world one day.
I won't allow places like this to tell her that she can't.
I won't let them tell her that she needs a dead man to marry her
Or that to have a vagina is to be a second place human
Or that my sperm contained the gene for original sin,
Passed down to her along with my eye color and penicillin allergy.

When she lifts her arms for me to pick her up,
I think of those who will fill the sanctuary this weekend,
Crying and raising their hands, like babies in a crib,
Toward a father who isn't around or maybe has his headphones on.
As for me, I can pick up my girl, tell her I love her, and leave this place.
In this way, I'm a much better dad than certain folk I'm not allowed to name.

My Path To Atheism

Introduction
I feel the need to make the following clear in print and in public: I don't think that God exists. I write about God and lot and think about God a lot and use the word God a lot, but when I do so, I'm often taking advantage of the flexibility of the word and the concept. To clarify, then: I don't believe in a supernatural being who's behind all this. I'm not a deist who believes that a god created the universe and became uninvolved, and I'm certainly not a theist who thinks that there is a god who answers prayers or performs miracles or has any direct effect on our lives. I don't believe that such a thing as Yahweh from the Hebrew Scriptures exists or that Jesus is his son and died for us or that Allah is the one true god. I don't even believe in a more abstract "force" that guides us in any way. There is nothing.

I'm also pretty certain about this, so I'm not an agnostic. I only hesitate to use the other "A" word because it merely describes part of what I am -- not all that I am -- where gods are concerned. I don't believe in gods in the same way that readers of The Catcher in the Rye don't believe in Holden Caulfield. Readers, of course, take their disbelief of Holden as a given (no special term needed), since his nonexistence doesn't prevent him from being talked about, analyzed, or loved. I feel this way about mythology. I love Zeus and Christ and Ra and Krishna. They're important to the world and they're important to me and the way I think. And while I think the literalism of religion misunderstands what gods actually are, I often take issue with the dismissive way that nonbelievers treat gods as well. But, in spite of this hesitation and disclaimer, atheist is an accurate label for me. I'm an atheist. Here's my story.

Belief in God: An Analysis of My Early Years

Introduction
I'd like to analyze my earliest beliefs about God, to explain why I believed what I believed as a young boy and young man. I'd also like to stop shy of my current beliefs, since those don't really matter for this post. I also do not want to argue any belief or disbelief in God. I'm not trying to convince you of that (even if I write in the second person). This is a self-analysis of what started it all, but not a statement where I ended up or of what you should think.

The Parable of the Gay Man

Once there was a preacher whose colleagues felt he was a little too compassionate for his own good. And one day his fellow church leaders came into his office with a young man. Then they said to the preacher, "We have just found out that this man is a homosexual. The rules of our church says that he can no longer be a member of our congregation, but what do you say?" They wanted to test the preacher, so that they could perhaps remove him from his post.

At first the preacher just doodled on a notepad, as if he didn't hear them. But when the men became louder and asked the question again, the preacher said, "Anyone here who feels he is without sin and worthy to be in this congregation, I'll let that man kick this one out of our church." Then the preacher resumed doodling.

Every church leader left the room one by one, until only the young man and the preacher were left. The preacher said to the man, "Where did everyone go? Did they kick you out?" And the young man said no. "Then I won't kick you out either," the preacher said. "You may go now, but sin no more."

Then the young man turned to the preacher and said, " 'Sin no more'? Fuck you, I haven't done anything wrong."

The Holy

When I was a kid, the family tendency, as soon as we got home from church, was to strip off all our dressy church clothes, put on shorts and T-shirts, and watch TV the rest of the night. But I resisted this tendency. I don't blame the family for doing it (as I got older, I did it too), but something in me wanted to go into my room by myself, keep my church clothes on, do some quiet activity or do nothing at all (maybe even just go to bed and think), and above all avoid the TV. Something about immediately going back to "normal" just felt wrong to me, made me feel a little sick. I realize now that feeling has to do with the concept of the holy, which I'll attempt to describe here.

William Blake: The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

I first read William Blake in high school when I was about sixteen years old: Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience. I liked those, but I started really liking Blake when I chose to do my eleventh grade research paper on his life and works. The more I found out about him, the more weirdly familiar he seemed to me, until I eventually started flattering myself with the thought that I must have been William Blake in a previous life (something that still crosses my mind each time I read him).

I was intrigued by Blake as a mystic, his having visions of his dead brother and of angels, of staring at a knot in a piece of wood until he became scared of it, etc. I've never had strong visions or dreams about anything (unless you count my occasional sleep paralysis), but I like the concept of seeing things that aren't there--or specifically, seeing differently the things that are there. I think I do this different-seeing a little, though sometimes I simply see nothing where everyone else sees something. Lots of this world is invisible to me.

I was also intrigued by Blake as a visual artist. He was just as much a drawer, painter, engraver, etc. as he was a writer, and I loved the way he combined the two on the same page (or, in his case, engraved plate). This is how I got my start as a writer, too: writing words to tell stories about my pictures (and not the other way around). Like a lot of my favorite storytellers (C.S. Lewis and David Lynch to name two), the images came first. He also produced everything himself, rather than going to a traditional publisher, creating his books indie rock style, which is way that I've approached most of my art (especially my music), often from necessity but also because I like the freedom.

I became especially interested in Blake's prophetic books, though I didn't begin reading them properly until recently. As a teenager, I liked reading about them, but I must have felt (after glancing at the works themselves) that they were too much to undertake at that young age, so I put them off until later. Every time I read them now, that familiarity hits me again. They get me excited, and they also make me laugh.

I will probably eventually create posts for most of Blake's major works as I read (or re-read) them, but today I want to start with The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Primarily I just want to get across some of the ideas he expressed in this work, even just as summary, but I will also give some commentary. You should be warned that some of the commentary will be comparisons of Blake to me more than any kind of real analysis of the work--which might suck for you if you don't know who I am… or if you do know who I am. I'm not sure which is worse.

(Special note: when I quote Blake throughout this post, I have chosen to correct his crazy spellings, capitalizations, and punctuation to more or less "smooth out" his writing for the sake of readability.)

You can and should read the entire Marriage of Heaven and Hell here first. It has both the text of the work as well as his illuminations. And, if you're interested in an analysis of the book, you can read a "run-through" I wrote for my world literature class this semester. The PDF is here.